


Raindrops

by batyalewbel



Series: Ghost Quartet [5]
Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Episode 1x10 tag, Family stuff plus Arthur, Gen, ghost stuff and musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-23 12:26:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16618934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyalewbel/pseuds/batyalewbel
Summary: Time wasn’t a straight line. It wasn’t linear. It wasn’t like a line of dominoes.Time was a circle. Time was raindrops or snowflakes.One moment she was a child wandering Hill House with Luke, the next she was witnessing her death, the next she was reliving some insignificant moment of her teen years, and the next...she was still dead and still at Hill House.





	Raindrops

**Author's Note:**

> This might have some typos whoops I'll fix them when I find them.

 

 _You know that moment right before you die is such a gift_  
_Because you get to choose what goes through your head_  
_What your last song will be_

 _I thought of someone I love very much_  
_Smiling in bed, clutching a teddy bear_

 _And then_  
_I let the train rip through me_

_-Usher Part 3, Ghost Quartet_

When Nell was a little girl she liked to imagine the fantastical. Ponies and princesses and tea parties and cups full of stars.

When Nell was a little girl she lived the fantastical, just not in the way that little Nell might have hoped for. She lived with ghosts and demons and disappearances and phantoms who haunted her all her life.

When she grew up she understood the difference between her fantasies and the reality she lived. Although no one ever really believed her or listened to her. And slowly, that reality ripped her apart from the inside.

\---

Time wasn’t a straight line. It wasn’t linear. It wasn’t like a line of dominoes.

Time was a circle. Time was raindrops or snowflakes.

One moment she was a child wandering Hill House with Luke, the next she was witnessing her death, the next she was reliving some insignificant moment of her teen years, and the next...she was still dead and still at Hill House.

It was winter now and a few stray snowflakes found their way inside the cavernous halls of the house. She no longer felt the cold but she still loved snow.

\---

Her mother was the first to die. Back when Nell was too young to understand what death even meant. She wanted to use puffalopes and write letters to her mom so she would know what was happening with everyone while she was away. She tried to explain to her siblings but it only seemed to upset them so she stopped.

Luke understood of course. Because Luke _always_ understood.

\---

The night Arthur died, Luke called her.

He was stuttering and talking too fast and Nell could just _tell_ from the way her own pulse seemed to thrum a little too fast, he was probably high. But he called her, just minutes after it happened.

The phone rang and Nell blindly reached for it, barely able to pick herself up off the floor.

“Nell what happened?” Luke asked, panic audible in his voice.

She could barely speak, she just kept sobbing into the phone, into Arthur’s chest.

“Nell, _Nell,_ what happened?” Luke kept asking until she managed to just say one word.

_“Arthur.”_

And she didn’t have to say more, because Luke knew. Of _course_ he knew.

“I’ll call Steve,” he said, “I’ll...I’m sorry Nellie.”

She just kept crying and nodded her head like he could see. Maybe he would feel it and know.

“I’ll...I’ll get Steve.”

He hung up the phone and Nell let hers drop to the floor.

\---

Watching them all at her funeral made her ache. Because even now, they couldn’t stop _arguing._ Shirley was mad at Steven who was mad at dad and Theo was always angry and she just wanted them all to _stop._

She kept standing there, begging them to _stop._

There were only five of them now. They would have to be good to each other. They would have to stop acting like this and help each other. She wanted to take them all by the hand and drag them back from these stupid squabbles.

But they couldn’t see her. They couldn’t hear her.

She knocked the casket over in a fury and it made them stop. But it made them sad too.

She didn’t want them to be sad anymore. She was sad enough for all of them.

\---

She hadn’t meant to lose it on Theo the way she did. Trying to force her ungloved hand into the carpet. She just wanted to know that there was something of Arthur still present. She wanted to know that he wasn’t gone. She wanted to know he wasnt killed by a ghost from her nightmares. She was sorry the moment she grabbed her sister's hand. But like so many moments, she couldn’t take it back. She couldn’t undo what had been said.

She was there when Theo touched her corpse. She knew the nothing that Theo was feeling. It wasn't death but it was close to it. She had wanted to reach out and pull her sister's hand back. To tell her  _'No, you're better off without this.'_

Theo had been right to refuse Nell all those years ago. The feeling of death was not meant for the living. 

And as Theo sobbed in that white sterile room, Nell wrapped her arms around her sister and wished she could feel it. Wished she could hear Nell whisper, _"It's okay Theo."_

But she didn't and she couldn't.

\---

Steve did come to Nell’s house the night Arthur died. He had a spare key and so after some cursing and fumbling in the dark, he opened the door and found her, still lying on the floor next to her husband’s corpse, crying inconsolably.

She remembered that night from the inside. She remembered the agony of it and the moment when her brother came and sat beside her on the floor with a hand on her back.

“I’m so sorry Nell,” he murmured and he sat with her until the paramedics came and took Arthur’s body away. And then he sat with her after, when she couldn’t get up from the carpet and she couldn’t stop crying. Eventually he pulled her into his lap like he used to when they were kids. And he held her tight whispering, _“It’s okay Nellie, it’ll okay,”_ until the sobs finally dried up and she was left empty and quiet.

But now she can see it all from the outside too. Steve's panic at the front door, the way he stumbled into the house and flinched at the sight of her on the floor. It looks terrifying from the outside. And now she watches as a spectator, the scene tilted on its axis.

She sees many moments that way now.

\---

The moment she died, she understood all of it. The Red Room, Hill House, all of it.

Her mission from then on was to keep the rest of them safe. To keep them alive and happy if she could manage it. It turned out that she couldn’t manage happy.

Or even alive.

She was so focused on her siblings. On Luke, Theo, Shirley, and Steve, she forgot to watch over Dad.

How could she have forgotten Dad?

When he joined them in the Red Room, it broke her to pieces. She wanted them all to be _safe_ and far from Hill House.

Still, she clung to him dearly, because she had missed him so much.

But it made her unbearably sad to see him there.

She didn’t want him there.

\---

The House was changing her. She could feel it, the way one might feel a slow sickness in the blood. The strangeness of the House was in her now. She had to hang onto herself tightly. She had to keep herself together even as more and more of her scattered like raindrops in a storm.

The House was changing her.

It got to Mom before she had even arrived, but now Dad was here and he seemed to understand the way she did. It was important for them to remain as themselves.

Dad said they had to keep an eye out, in case some new unsuspecting family came to Hill House one day. He said it was important that they remain to try and protect people from the evil of the House.

She wasn’t so sure the House itself was evil.

It was just a carcass in the woods after all.

But it was a strange house and it was full of ghosts, some of whom were terrible and some of whom simply _were._

She liked to spend time with Abigail. A quiet and curious spirit, she never said much but when she first saw Nell again, she asked if Luke was okay. Nell smiled and said he was. Sometimes they had tea parties together in the Red Room.

Sometimes Mom joined them.

\---

Shirley organized Arthur’s funeral. Nell wasn’t even sure _how_ since they were on the other side of the country, but somehow she did. She had just told Nell not to worry and then said she just needed to make some calls.

A few days later there was a beautiful service. Shirley and Theo flew to LA for it. And Nell heard Shirley arguing with some woman at the funeral parlor about lilies.

It was a very Shirley thing to do.

To do something perfectly decent and kind and then somehow find it unsatisfactory.

She had brought Allie and Jayden too and the two of them were so bright and lively, even on one of the worst days of her life, Nell couldn’t help but smile as they came running.

\---

She was so scared when she saw them all filter into Hill House. First Luke, determined and sure, then the others followed. Nell couldn’t stop Mom _and_ Poppy. She couldn’t stop the House from trying to take him. Or Steven or Dad or Theo or Shirley. She watched them drop one by one as the house took them.

Of course the house forgot about her sometimes and so she slipped into their terrible dreams and pulled them out one by one.

Luke's was the hardest. Mom wanted him so bad. Nell had to beat her fists against the walls of his dream, forcing the image of her child self to speak and tell him _Don’t._

Until finally, she was able to step inside the Red Room, all bright and white and grab her brother by the arm and _pull._

\---

She didn’t realize until she was dead that it was up to her to protect them. To protect all of them.

Even if it turned her into snowflakes and confetti. She was already dead, what else could happen?

No, she wouldn’t think of it. She was going to keep her siblings safe and alive no matter what.

\---

The moment of her death was so strange. It felt like a half a dream. And then half a nightmare.

A short drop followed by a sudden stop.

Her death was instant. She did not linger.

But her soul kept falling, back and back through time.

Until the terrible understanding came. She had been her own nightmare all along.

\---

When her brothers and sisters finally left Hill House, Mom nearly flew into a rage, her image puddling into that of a statue or something worse.

 _“Why did you take them from me?”_ she demanded in a fury that reminded Nell of when she was a child being accused of writing her name on the wall.

 _“Because it’s not time for them yet,”_ she replied, her voice small compared to the thunder of her mother. The house had made her larger and yet more empty. Nell wished she could undo that but she couldn’t.

Maybe Dad could though.

So small compared to this towering form.

 _“She’s right Liv,”_ he murmured gently, reaching out to grasp her hand.

Suddenly Mom was human sized again as she looked at him.

“But they need to wake up,” she said.

“But they are awake,” Dad insisted, “And when they’re ready to sleep we’ll see them again.”

They would have this argument in infinite variations for many, many years.

\---

Nell visited Luke when she could.

Sometimes if she was very quiet, she could slip away and sneak into his dreams. She meant nothing by it. She just missed her twin brother.

He never seemed alarmed by her presence. Sometimes she thought that he even enjoyed her visits.

Sometimes she was even able to talk and she would ask how their siblings were doing. Luke would smile, soft and warm and tell her about Theo’s wedding, about Leigh’s new baby, about Jayden’s first day of high school.

And she would ask how Luke was doing. He would tell her two weeks, two months, two years sober. Until finally he would just tell her was doing okay and she would see that it was true.

She wished she could have been alive to celebrate with him and she knew he felt that way too.

She missed him _so much_ and knew he felt the same.

\---

They could _see_ her.

There in the Red Room they could see her as Luke pointed and they all turned to her.

She was still a little lost. Awash through time because that was the way of Hill House but they could see her and _hear her._

She got to kneel beside Luke and hold his hand and tell him to _live._

She got to talk to Theo one last time. She got to tell Shirley how grateful she was for all the times she had been there. She got to tell Steven that he should put aside his guilt, that she was destined for this no matter what.

This was always going to be her outcome.

But she got to tell them how much she loved them.

And that the rest was _confetti._

\---

Not all of them would come back to Hill House in the end.

But Nell was there for all of them at the last.

Theo was the final Crain to die, in bed with her wife at a ripe old age of ninety-two. She would die with her eyes open, holding Trish’s hand.

And Nell was by her bedside to take her spirit by the hand and lead her away.

Shirley was not long before that. She’d started getting seizures in her later years. A more fatal version of mother’s migraines or so it seemed. She could see always Nell in the moments before a seizure. And Nell would sit with her through them, alongside Kevin, Jayden, or Allie, even if they couldn’t see her.

Finally she had one fit too many and that was that. Nell was there with her as it passed and she passed. Her ghost sat up and recognized Nell with a smile.

\---

When Luke died, the cancer took him slowly and then all at once.

At least it had the decency to wait many, _many_ years before it finally took him. His spirit grabbed her by the hand and it took a lot of prodding and cajoling to convince him not to come back with her to Hill House. " _One day,'"_  she promised, " _when the house finally crumbles to dust and I’m free to be a raindrop, I’ll join you. But you cannot come back with me."_

 _"Why?"_ He begged, for a moment not looking old at all, but like her little six year old twin brother with a stuffy nose and thick glasses.

 _"Because,"_ she said firmly, "I _t will be better this way. I promise."_

Finally he agreed and she let him drift away.

\---

Steven was the first to die and she could not stop him from coming back to Hill House.

A sudden heart attack felled him when he was still too young. He barely looked older than the last time she had seen him.

And he showed up at the door of Hill House, already a ghost, already claimed by the House.

All she could do was welcome him with open arms and pass on all the knowledge. About time, and the house, and their job to protect. Ever protect. Steven agreed like he already knew.

And so the three Crains at Hill House became four.

\---

Nell knew that Steven could not see her as he exited Hill House that night. His steps slow and heavy as all the ghosts of the house crowded at his back, but didn’t touch him.

She knew the House was claiming him then.

All she could do was watch the raindrops and wait.

Like so many things in her life, she would get what she wanted but with a twist.

She wanted magic and she got ghosts.

She wanted to see her siblings again and she would as a ghost.

Life, it seemed, had a sense of irony. Even in death.

\---

It took years, maybe even centuries. But the house remained largely untouched.

Sometimes people might wander in its walls. Often curious children who had heard tales of a haunted house.

Nell would watch over them and keep them safe. Maybe they saw her form in a mirror and ran in fear but they were safe and they had a ghost story to tell. It seemed they were all stories in the end.

And when the house finally crumbled into ruin, she was free. Steven, Mom, and Dad too.

They were finally free to pass on to other side and Nell did so eagerly.

Luke was waiting for her there. And Arthur who had been so patient for so long. Theo and Shirley too.

Years and years ago Luke had explained the importance of the number seven.

Now the seven of them would be together again plus a few more.

And there would finally be peace and rain and _rest._

**Author's Note:**

> So I know it's all called Ghost Quartet but I thought it would be fitting to call it that and have a fifth part for Nellie. It felt right. Also I bummed myself out with this a bit. And also with the way she talked about time this was intentionally non-linear.


End file.
